Narmer was an Egyptian Pharaoh who ruled in the 31st century BC. Thought to be the successor to the predynastic Scorpion and/or Ka, he is considered by some to be the founder of the First dynasty, and therefore the first king of all Egypt. There is a...

Sargon of Akkad, also known as Sargon the Great "the Great King" was a Semitic Akkadian emperor famous for his conquest of the Sumerian city-states in the 23rd and 22nd centuries BC. The founder of the Dynasty of Akkad, Sargon reigned during the last...

The Hittites were an Anatolian people who established an empire at Hattusa in north-central Anatolia around 1600 BC. This empire reached its height during the mid-14th century BC under Suppiluliuma I, when it encompassed an area that included most of...

Cyrus the Great, also known as Cyrus II or Cyrus of Persia, was the first Zoroastrian Persian emperor. He was the founder of the Persian Empire under the Achaemenid dynasty. It was under his own rule that the empire embraced all previous civilized s...

The Achaemenid Empire (c. 550–330 B.C.E.), known as the Persian Empire, was the successor state of the Median Empire, expanding to eventually rule over significant portions of the ancient world which at around 500 B.C.E. stretched from the Indus Vall...

Lucretia is a legendary figure in the history of the Roman Republic. According to Livy's version of the establishment of the Republic, the last king of Rome, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus (superbus, "the proud") who ruled from 535 BC to 510 BC, had a vi...

Alexander III of Macedon, commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of Macedon, a state in the north eastern region of Greece, and by the age of thirty was the creator of one of the largest empires in ancient history, stretching from the Ioni...

Chandragupta Maurya was the founder of the Mauryan Empire and the first emperor to unify India into one state. He ruled from 322 BC until his voluntary retirement and abdication in favour of his son Bindusara in 298 BC.
Chandragupta Maurya is a pi...

Battle of Gaugamela (331 BC). Clash between the forces of Alexander the Great and Darius III of Persia that brought the fall of the Persian empire. Attempting to stop Alexander's incursions, Darius prepared a battleground on the Plain of Gaugamela in...

Ashoka Maurya, commonly known as Ashoka and also as Ashoka the Great, was an Indian emperor of the Maurya Dynasty who ruled almost all of the Indian subcontinent from ca. 269 BCE to 232 BCE. One of India's greatest emperors, Ashoka reigned over most...

Qin Shi Huang is the modern Chinese name of King Zheng of Qin (r.246–221 BC), who ended the Warring States period by completing the conquest of China in 221 BC. Rather than maintain the title of king borne by the Shang and Zhou rulers, he ruled as th...

The Xiongnu, also known as the Asiatic Huns, were one of the nomadic peoples of Ancient Central Asia. They're thought to have descended from various Turkic peoples known as Xianyun, Xunyu and Hongyu, yet all the knowledge we have come from Chinese so...

Gaius Julius Caesar is remembered as one of history's greatest generals and a key ruler of the Roman empire. As a young man he rose through the administrative ranks of the Roman republic, accumulating power until he was elected consul in 59 B.C. Over...

Emperor Augustus of Rome was born with the given name Gaius Octavius on September 23, 63 B.C. He took the name Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus (Octavian) in 44 B.C. after the murder of his great uncle, Julius Caesar. In his will Caesar had adopted Oct...

The Great Roman Civil War (49–45 BC), aka Caesar’s Civil War, was one of the last politico-military conflicts in the Roman Republic before the establishment of the Roman Empire. It began as a series of political and military confrontations, between J...